Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1887-05-26

tons 5000, daughter of retired Mill
tary man, excellent pianiste.
Anatole accepts at once, and two
months later he is married and happy,
and his innocent wife, who knows moth
ing about the Intervention of the dis
Greet agency, exclaims in a moment OF
expansion: my Anatole, what lucky
| idea that you stopped at Dion on your
way to Geneva! Had it not been for
that, we might never have metz
Now comes the question, How did
the matrimonial agent know that this
modest and honorable spinster was
waiting for husband on the outskirts
of Dion? The answer is, because he
has correspondents all over France,
who send him information and exercise
a sol. of secret police on his account.
In the provinces every body knows
every thing about every body else, and
it is easy for the correspondents of the
matrimonial agents to note that Mile.
A. has inherited go, 900, that Mile. B.
has weakness for lawyers, and that
Mile. C. has refused to take the vail.
Every good" you will say. ':Now tell
me how the matrimonial agent man.
ages to bring the young people togeth-
err" This is precisely the point where
genius comes into play, aided often by
an obliging priest. The matrimonial
agent has under his command whole
army of secondary agents, who may
be classified under seven headings, viz:
scouts, entertainers having homes, per-
manent or temporary inquiry agents.
travellers, followers, introducers and
conscious or unconscious intermedi-
aries. The chief scout of a first-class
Partisan matrimonial agency was
formerly body-servant of Cavour; he
married the chamberm,id of fashion
able beauty of the court of Napoleon
ILL.,; and now he and his wife earn in
their new profession $1,000 a year.
Their business is to discover marriage
able girls and to report them at head
quarters; the ex-valet of Cavour Cos
sips at cafes with men servants in rich
families; he learns the 1nodxs viuendi
of each family; he gets the names of all
the friends of family, and, if neces-
sary, the names of the friends of the
friends. Thanks to this information,
the chief matrimonial agent is able to
discover among these names either that
of a person affiliated with the agency,
or else an unconscious agent who will
introduce his client to the family of the
young lady whose hand and dowry are
to be won.
Travellers are agents sent to the
provinces, and especially to the sea-
side or to watering places, ON some
special mission. Followers are volun-
teer agents who 60 to marriages and
midday masses in the Paris churches,
remark young girls accompanied by
their mothers, follow them to their
homes, and by dint of patience dis
cover who they are, what they are
worth. and SO constitute sort of
dossier or brief, which they sell to an
agency. Conscious Intermediates are
financial agents, solicitors or notaries
whose business enables them to collect
information of private kind. AS for
the unconscious agents, they are
created by the conscious intermediary
who calls upon friend of the family
about which information is required,
or upon doctor or a priest who is in
relations with that family. This con-
sciOus intermediary has an honorable
social position; he apologies for in
truding, and says that he has been sent
to ask for information in view of
marriage much desired by person
whom he is not yet at liberty to name.
The family is puzzled, wonders who
the mysterious person may be, and
answers vaguely, perhaps. but suffi-
GENTLY to enable the agency to know
what are the desires of the family.
Then. if the agency has not on its
books a client capable of realizing
those desires. it is but poor agency.
The bride rarely knows that she has
been won through the intermediary of
an agency. 1t is only the very richly
lowered who are aware of the existence
of this complicated and mysterious
machinery, and who are therefore
tempted to see in every young man
with whom they waltz a client of a
matrimonial agency which is seeking
to earn its usual commission of twelve
per cent on the dowry. Thanks to the
extension of the operations of matri-
monial agencies, French marriages in
the middle and upper classes tend more
and more to become merely operations
of loveless arithmetical multiplication.
tn. c., tn n. Y. Sun.